My
wife has been after me to write an article
on my strength training ideas for some
months now and I’ve finally found
(made) the time to sit and pen it down.
We are often asked by folks who are pressed
for time, have no energy to work out
or are just not inclined to exercise
what the minimum amount of strength exercise
is to maintain muscle /bone density and
the strength needed to do the all important
activities of daily living. Remember
my oft repeated warning that between
50 and 60 we lose 10% muscle mass per
year until by 60 we have bare bones minimal
muscle mass to move ourselves around.
Walk thru any orthopedic rehab ward in
a rehab hospital and you’ll see
what I mean; folks with barely enough
muscle to lift a comb and not enough
to get out of bed or off the potty! You
can keep from losing it by training and
supplements (I touched on the supplements
in my article “The Essentials Of
Life and Wellness”). If you’ve
already lost it, you can restore it.
The only needed prerequisite is to be
breathing. As long as you are breathing
you can get stronger and better.

Most
weight training advice repeats the
dictum that there must be at least
one exercise per body part. There are
an awful lot of body parts and besides
this preaching is not true strength
training but watered down body building
philosophy, which is way different
than strength training. (Most body
builders would not know real strength
training if they saw it or fell over
it). We are not looking to build kissably
beautiful biceps useful only for posing
on the beach and not much else! Most
of us don’t need to compensate
with muscle size for lack of size elsewhere
- you get my drift. Nuff said on that.

We will
pattern this workout after the work of
Professor Emeritus of Exercise Physiology
Dr. Philip Rasch. Dr. Rasch was the head
of the Naval Human Performance Laboratory
at MCB Quantico from it’s founding
in the 1960’s and ran it through
70’s. He was the man who developed
the workouts for the Marines, the Navy's
UDT and early Seals. Today's Marine physical
fitness test still reflects the truths
he taught. What are those truths? Simply
this: Watch a baby crawl on the floor,
he is pushing with his lower extremities
and pulling with his uppers. The way
the Creator made us, 70% of our pelvis
and lower extremity muscles push and
70% of our torso and upper extremity
muscles pull. That being the case he
surmised if they find the most efficient
lower extremity pushing exercise and
the most efficient upper extremity pulling
exercise we would have worked out 70%
of our total body musculature in the
most used aspects and ranges of motion!
Simple! After that the main thing Dr.
Rasch said needing attention was the
abdominal girdle which included the lower
back muscles. With this as a guide we
can choose which exercises to perform.
The next question is how much of them
to do and against what resistance's?

For that
we turn to American researchers from
the 60’s, the decade before all
of the fad work out appeared on the scene.
From Delorm and Watkins we learn that
if the object of an exercise cannot be
accomplished in 3 to 4 sets than the
exercise is being improperly done or
the exercise is not effective to achieve
the desired ends. So now we have the
number of sets, next to the resistance
vs. the number of reps.

Many
folks believe that lifting a moderate
to light weight once for many reps will
tone and strengthen a muscle the same
as lifting a heavy one for few reps.
This is a reincarnation of the old tonnage
theory. That theory of muscle training
basically said that lifting 1 pound 300
times was the same as lifting 300 pounds
once. Do you think that doing 300 reps
with 1 pound will ready you to lift 300
pounds once? Neither do I. And, as with
all theories if the principle does not
work out in the real world then the theory
is proved false. Tonnage theory was proved
false, much to the cost of a few olympic
lifters who lost potential births on
the US team for the ‘68 or ‘72
games by training to such a silly proposition.
Yet the myth persists especially among
women lifters and trainers.

When
you weight train you are choosing your
place along a continuum. At one end you
high resistance which will create great
strength, great muscle density, great
bone density, by training for something
called muscle hyperplasia, (where a muscle
bundle is worked to the point where to
adapt to the work it has to split into
two muscle bundles and overlap like ply
wood). In the middle, using moderate
resistance with higher sets and reps
you have large size muscles and moderate
strength produced by muscular hypertrophy.
(In hypertrophy, muscles are basically
water ballooned, bloated in their adaptation
to the work. Some strength is had but
it and the size are easily lost. This
type of adaptation is not good for any
kind of sport or activity at all except
for posing and as you’ve heard
me say before body building is NOT a
contact sport). At the end of the spectrum
you have low resistance with very high
repetitions, this is like the marathon
of weightlifting. Here you have great
endurance but little strength, worst
of all if you train like this too long
for too many reps it becomes like marathoning
and you lose muscle mass. So building
plywood is better than water ballooning
and both are better than losing muscle
mass!

Again
let me make another analogy: look at
sprinters, they have beautiful muscles,
sleek and strong bodies. They train very
heavy for short duration's. Look at the
other end of the spectrum to the marathoners.
No muscle mass, look like concentration
camp victims, no strength, likely can’t
open a jar of pickles with out help but
they can run for 26 miles! Since there
is nothing in the activities of daily
living that requires a great level of
endurance and nothing in the ADL’s
requires posing ability, then it’s
best to go with the type of training
that has the greatest crossover into
our daily lives - real strength training
using heavy resistance, low reps and
low sets.

What
do we mean by heavy? Heavy is any weight
that will barely allow you to get the
last two reps out . So, if your repetition
scheme says that you must do 5 reps then
the last two reps should be doable but
only just!

After
playing with reps vs. resistance for
the last 30 years plus, the number of
reps that I believe have the greatest
transference to the activities of daily
life are 5 to 7. So, the work we do is
3 sets of 5 to 7 repetitions. It happens
like this: Week # 1 with a new weight
do 3 sets of 5 reps with a 2 minute rest
in between (each set) for each exercise.
Week #2 do 3 sets of 6 reps, week # 3
do 3 sets of 7 reps, week # 4 is actually
week #1 all over again as you increase
the resistance by 5 or 10 pounds and
go back to doing 3 sets of 5. Easy!

That
takes care of the principles involved,
now to the actual work, and why these
exercise have been chosen. First lets
look over two very good pelvis and lower
extremity exercises. The Squat and the
Leg Press. Wait, you heard squats were
bad - that was a rumor based on an invalid
study done by one self serving orthopedist
who wanted to prove theory and so concocted
a study in which his forgone conclusion
was a foregone conclusion. In other words
he ran an invalid study! If squats like
most all exercises, are performed with
proper bio mechanics the likely hood
of injury is as low as with any other
form of compound lower extremity / pelvis
movement. The only truly unsafe exercise
I can think of are called Good Mornings
and Straight Leg Dead Lifts. We need
not go into those. Now to the advantage
of squats: this movement not only strengthens
the muscles of the pelvis and lower extremities
but in putting compression pressure on
the spine also creates the stimulus to
increase bone density there. Remember
the law that governs bone density (Wolfs
Law) states “Mineralization is
laid into bone along axial lines of stress”.

Now let’s
leave the squat hating weenies behind
and look at what it takes to do a squat
safely. First of all rank beginners and
those with shoulder problems limiting
the ability to hold a bar on your shoulders,
there are plenty of machines that will
help a person to do squats without having
to hold a bar. Smith machines, Power
Tech squat machines and plenty more.
Just as an example we’ll use the
Power Tech which my Marine son tells
me are widely available in gyms and that
the Corps has them in it’s gyms.

For all
squatting and leg press movements we
need to optimize the biomechanics of
the movement. In squatting and leg pressing
the feet need to be wider than shoulder
width apart but not exaggeratedly wide.
Next, outwardly rotate the feet and knees
to about a 40 degree angle from pointing
straight forward. (See Picture). This
creates a position where the lines of
force coming up through the thigh bone
converge in the sacrum creating a vector
and this increases strength and aids
lifting.

We are
only going to go down half way to about
a 90 degree angle at the knee not so
much because going lower creates injury
(only so if you bounce off the bottom)
but because for strength reasons there
is no need to go down that low. The partial
or half range of motion will strengthen
the entire ROM very well without having
to go all the way down which many of
us because of the wear to our knees cannot
do. (See Pictures 1 & 2).

Picture
1

Picture
2

In the
Leg Press again we take the wide stance
with toes and knees rotated out. As in
the squat we only go down half way to
about a 90 degree angle of bend then
we push up. (See Pictures 3 & 4).
Try both of the lower body exercises
and decide which one you prefer and use
that one, there is no need to do both.

Picture
3

Picture
4

Next
for the most efficient Upper Body exercise
the Front Pulldown. There are many variations
of the pulldown but the most biomechanical
efficient and thorough is the one where
your palms are facing your face (supinated)
and are placed shoulder width apart on
the bar. (See Pictures 5 & 6). Wider
grips endanger the rotator cuff of the
shoulder as do the palms facing away
(pronated) grip. As soon as you turn
the palms away from you two bad things
happen 1) You’ve just cut your
range of motion in half from 160 degrees
to 80 by changing the plane of motion
you are working on as the palms out grip
forces your arms out to work in the Frontal
Plane instead of the Sagittal (front
to back) plane. 2) In forcing resistance
against the shoulder at the outward angels
of the Frontal plane the tendons of the
rotator cuff suffer strains and tears.
It is from these wide grip and pronated
grip pulldowns and pullups that most
older weight trainers trash out their
shoulders. Although it must be said that
wide grip full Range Of Motion bench
presses have as much to do with creating
shoulder cuff damage as the wide grip
pulldowns.

Picture
5

Picture
6

Now for
the midsection. Here we have two things
to do. We will not get fancy as these
are basic bare bones exercises so instead
of dealing with muscle groups we’ll
deal with sides such as: Front and back.
For the front most of the ab machines
will do nicely though my preference is
for the bio mechanics of the abb machine
designed by Dr. Fred Hatfield known affectionately
in the power lifting world as Dr. Squat.
Again here we will go against the conventional
wisdom and work the abdomen for strength
and not so much to develop pretty but
weak beach boy abs so we’ll keep
the reps down and the resistance up instead
of the way body builders do it with light
resistance and hundreds of reps.

For the
back of the midsection the best and safest
exercise is the 45 degree prone back
extension. For this a suitable bench
is needed and while a regular Roman Chair
bench and movement is okay I’ve
found the 45 degree angle to be best.
To increase resistance here you simply
hold onto a plate or dumbbell(s). Do
not hyper extend or arch as this may
overly compress the posterior aspects
of the lumbar discs. Try to stop the
movement when your shoulders and knees
are in line.

If you
are restricted for time or must work
out but really don’t want to, these
4 exercises will have you covered in
terms of maintaining and increasing both
muscle mass and bone density as well
as maintaining and increasing your strength
to keep your ADL’s easy.

What
about aerobic work? Aerobic work does
not transfer to the ADL's!!! It’s
that simple. Some minimal amount of it
is needed to maintain the strength of
the heart but not anywhere as much as “experts” are
saying you need. 7 to 24 min. tops with
the average being 8 to 16 min. is all
anyone needs. Interval work of 2 min.
work and 1 to 2 min. rest for 12 to 24
min. is even better and strengthens the
heart better against shock. Read my article
How To Avoid A Heart Attack - Do Less
Aerobic Exercise and read the book The
Doctors Heart Cure by cardiologist John
Sears; seems some MD’s have finally
caught on with what the European exercise
physiologists have been trying to tell
them for the last 30 years!

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